256 Channels of Hope for Families with Schizophrenia

Monica Wolter, UBC

Most people enjoy the sound of laughter, but not Wes Pahl.
When Wes hears laughter, he is tormented by the thought that people are
laughing at him or about him. He suffers from schizophrenia, a debilitating
disease that causes delusions, hallucinations and disorganized thinking—a
disease that causes people like Wes to live in conflict with the world around
them.

Two of Wes’s three brothers also live with schizophrenia. As
each sibling was diagnosed with the disease over a two-year period, their
father and mother, Gerhart and Penny Pahl, faced overwhelming challenges. For
the first time in their lives, the Pahls were involved with the criminal
justice system and forced to navigate a complicated medical system, all while
living as a family with an incurable illness.

Like many people dealing with schizophrenia, Gerhart turned
to the BC Schizophrenia Society (BCSS) to help his family manage their new
challenges. In 2005, he became Director of the BCSS and eventually Chair of the
Society’s Foundation. Through his involvement with the BCSS and with other
families affected by the illness, Gerhart became convinced that mental health
research is the greatest hope for identifying more effective treatments and
ultimately a cure for this devastating disease.

Gift of discovery and
hope

This hope led the BCSS Foundation to donate $75,000 to the
UBC Faculty of Medicine to enable the Institute of Mental Health and the Department
of Psychiatry to purchase a modern electroencephalograph (EEG) to advance
schizophrenia research. The EEG is a cutting-edge piece of equipment resembling
a netted swim cap peppered with 256 electrodes—almost 200 more than traditional
versions of the technology. Although these electrodes are small, they have the
powerful ability to directly measure neurons firing across the brain.

This gift is the most recent pledge of support in a
three-decade long partnership between the BCSS and the UBC Faculty of Medicine,
including the establishment of the Jack Bell Chair in Schizophrenia, which has
catalyzed important discoveries in schizophrenia, from basic science to
clinical treatments.

Dr. Todd Woodward, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, is one
of the researchers who will benefit from the EEG equipment. Dr. Woodward’s
research focuses on identifying ways to augment the pharmaceutical treatment
and management of schizophrenia – a critical area of study, as approximately
30% of people with schizophrenia do not respond well to medication alone and it
is not understood why some benefit while others do not.

Dr. Woodward, who has been supported by the BCSS since 1999,
was one of the pioneers of metacognitive training – an approach that teaches
people with psychosis to recognize and correct misleading thoughts – which has
been shown to reduce the severity of schizophrenia symptoms including
delusions. This intervention aims to therapeutically rewire certain areas of
the brain to help patients manage their specific symptoms.

This EEG technology will enable Dr. Woodward to more
effectively measure changes in the neural pathways that cause symptoms of
psychosis, which will inform the development of new methods to help people with
schizophrenia and other forms of mental illness rewire or correct these brain pathways.

“This equipment is a major advance,” says Dr. Woodward. “We
can track the timing and anatomical signature of a thought or cognitive process
better than ever before. My hope is that our findings can be turned into
clinical treatments that help guide diseased minds to follow healthier brain
patterns. We may be only a year or two away.”

The 256-channel EEG has already been used to measure brain
function in more than 90 people across the Lower Mainland, and shows great
promise to expand our understanding of the brain in both diseased and healthy
states.

In addition to benefiting Woodward’s lab, the EGG will also
be used by other UBC schizophrenia and psychosis researchers.

“Our entire schizophrenia research program will benefit
greatly from access to the EEG and will help to generate research findings that
contribute to our growing knowledge about schizophrenia. These findings will
have a direct impact on the people who are struggling with schizophrenia now or
in the future,” says Dr. William Honer, Professor and Head of the Department of
Psychiatry, Director of the UBC Institute of Mental Health and Jack Bell Chair
in Schizophrenia.

Widespread research and treatment advances are exactly what
families like the Pahl’s hope to witness. “One day we parents will pass away
and it is critical that our children have the tools to permit them to function
independently,” explains Gerhart. “Although these tools don’t exist yet, they
are being developed through research.”

Moving forward, Dr. Woodward hopes to expand this modern EEG
technology to a number of hospitals throughout the Lower Mainland. He
emphasizes that the ability to collect data from these hospital sites and unify
the way schizophrenia research is conducted could lead to a world-class
research effort initiated in BC.

B.C. Schizophrenia Society Foundation raises funds for schizophrenia research and the programs and services offered by B.C. Schizophrenia Society. The Foundation was officially founded on November 17, 2004 as the Dr. Norma Calder Foundation and was later renamed the MIND Foundation before becoming B.C. Schizophrenia Society Foundation in 2013.